THE DEATH OF ARAFAT: THE PALESTINIANS; An Emotion-Driven Flock Storms the Burial Ceremony

By JAMES BENNET

Published: November 13, 2004

Palestinians said goodbye to their leader on Friday with a burial that completed a three-step cycle, making his final days a summary of his rule.

First there was indecision as Yasir Arafat hovered for days between life and death in a French hospital. Then came ambiguity, as the decision was made and Mr. Arafat died Thursday of an undisclosed illness that prompted rumors of poisoning and conspiracy, even as Palestinian officials heralded a hopeful new era.

And finally, on Friday, came chaos. Under a brilliant Middle Eastern sun, a caldron of love and hate, tears and threats boiled over the wall of the Muqata, the British-era fort that was Mr. Arafat's headquarters and his prison, and is now his tomb.

''Move back, move back!'' shouted gun- and stick-wielding Palestinian security officers. They were riding on top of Mr. Arafat's flag-draped coffin on a truck that cut a channel through thousands of Palestinians, who poured into the compound to join in a funeral planned for official guests only.

The dignified funeral the Palestinian leadership had prepared was overwhelmed by the passion and independent-mindedness that Mr. Arafat understood so deeply and nourished so assiduously in his fractious, yearning people.

In a stench of perspiration and spent gunpowder, they tore down the chain-link and barbed-wire fencing on top of the eight-foot wall. They swarmed over the rubble left by Israeli attacks, standing on top of the headquarters of the Palestinians' elite security forces, and on top of Mr. Arafat's own office.

Some security men fired into the air to disperse the crowd, which was showing them little respect; many Palestinians fired in the air in a sign of respect for their dead leader.

Some came to mourn a revolutionary, others a visionary, and a few a family member. ''It's so sad,'' said Raymonda al-Tawil, Mr. Arafat's mother-in-law.

She said she had spoken by telephone with Mr. Arafat's daughter, Zahwa, 9, who has lived with her mother in Paris during the current four-year conflict with Israel and who attended the more staid funeral service in Cairo on Friday morning.

''She said in French, 'Est-ce que Papa est mort?''' Mrs. Tawil recalled. ''I said, 'Oui, ma ch?e, il est mort.''' Asked how she had comforted the girl, Mrs. Tawil put her head in her hands and wept. ''I said: 'Papa is going to paradise. He will be an angel.'''

She said Mr. Arafat, who married late in life and did not talk much about his family, had spoken to his daughter every day. He took particular pride, Mrs. Tawil said, in Zahwa's success in math. ''He said: 'She is like her father. Don't forget he is an engineer,''' she said.

Steps away, with eyes red from crying, sat Fadwa Barghouti, the wife of Marwan Barghouti, the most popular Palestinian politician after Mr. Arafat. Mr. Barghouti, a canny, charismatic figure who built strong ties to Israeli officials as a diplomat and politician in gentler times, is now in an Israeli prison, convicted in the deaths of Israelis.

Mrs. Barghouti said she had heard from her husband's lawyer that Mr. Barghouti was desolate over Mr. Arafat's death and his own inability to share in the mourning. ''He was very sad because he is in isolation,'' she said. ''He couldn't see his people, or any Palestinian prisoners.''

Near Mrs. Barghouti, chairs were arrayed for diplomats. In the chair intended for the Turkish foreign minister sat the Rev. Michael Jenkins of Rockville, Md. Mr. Jenkins was at the head of a delegation connected to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

''We're here to pray for the president,'' he said of Mr. Arafat, adding that his delegation was also ''praying for the Jewish people, for unity.''

At the center of the hall was an emptiness where Mr. Arafat was to have been. The coffin was supposed to lie in state there, on a table draped with a white cloth. But as the crowd pushed into the hall, Palestinian officials diverted the coffin directly to the grave site for hasty burial.

Palestinians jammed the hall for a look at the cloth-covered table, believing that it might be the coffin itself. After shouting for people to draw back, a Palestinian security officer pounded the table with his fists, to prove that it did not contain the body of the beloved president.

In the plaza outside, Uri Avnery, one of the few Israeli Jews to attend the funeral, stood atop a concrete-filled barrel for a look at the crowd.

Dressed all in black, Mr. Avnery, a longtime peace activist, climbed carefully down when asked to assess Mr. Arafat. ''He did what all liberators do,'' he said, ''mixing violence with politics, diplomacy, gimmicks -- whatever limited means were at his disposal against the superiority of Israel in all practical aspects.''

Saying that Mr. Arafat had taken a dispersed people to the brink of statehood, he said, ''All of his many faults pale -- pale -- in comparison to this unique achievement.''

While he spoke, the yellow Egyptian helicopters that had brought Mr. Arafat's body from Cairo rose from the Muqata's pavement stirring a storm of dust that was infused with gold by the lowering sun.